In collaboration with Dialogue Books, Cultural Connections creates a link between our book of the week and an idea, a place, a film, a work of art or an object. Each book of the week featured in Cultural Connections has 10% off for that week, so head down to the bookstore (Schönleinstraße 31, 10967) to pick one up or just type in the discount code at the online checkout: connections10
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BOOK OF THE WEEK
Alone in Berlin – Hans Fallada
The story of ordinary Germans standing up to Hitler’s regime, Alone in Berlin has been described by Primo Levi as ‘the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis’. Based on an extraordinary true story, the novel provides a counterpoint to Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘the banality of evil’ in Nazi Germany, instead examining the ‘banality of good’, manifested here in one couple’s brave act of subversion.
Born in Greifswald in 1893, Hans Fallada’s turbulent life included killing a school friend in a duel, substance abuse, and periods in psychiatric care.
James Buchan notes that ‘Traces of [Fallada’s] unruly life are scattered through Alone in Berlin: brawling, delirium tremens, clinics and drying-out establishments, country idylls, theft, blackmail, morphine, and a vivid world of sub-proletarian swindling that exploits and is exploited by the Nazis.’
The result is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable novels to have emerged from the shadow of National Socialism.
‘This novel is far more than a literary thriller. Fallada’s vivid novel gives us the concentric circles of lives in a Berlin apartment block under totalitarianism.’ Financial Times
CULTURAL CONNECTIONS: PLACES
Plötzensee, Berlin
Between 1933 and 1945, nearly 3,000 people were unjustly executed by the Nazi regime at Plötzensee in Berlin. Today, the execution chamber stands as a memorial to all victims of National Socialism. Dating back to the 19th century, when it was a prison outside the Berlin city limits, Plötzensee under the Nazis began to be used to incarcerate political opponents and other 'undesirables'. Heavily damaged in an air raid in autumn 1943, the prison was by now severely overcrowded, and lacking both food and medical supplies.
After the 20 July 1944 coup attempt, 90 people were murdered in Plötzensee for suspected involvement or support of the plot to overthrow Hitler. By the time Red Army troops overran the facility in April 1945, it was largely deserted.
During the years of the Nazi regime, 2,891 people were murdered at Plötzensee. Of these, around 1,500 were convicted by the 'People’s Court' and about 1,000 by the Special Courts. About half of those executed were Germans, most of whom were sentenced to death for acts of resistance against the state.
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee, Plötzensee Memorial Center, Hüttigpfad Berlin
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